


Skin Deep

by pintpotjudas



Series: Marked [2]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Period Typical Homophobia, Soulmate AU, The Soviet Union was not a good place to be gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-06 02:02:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11590674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pintpotjudas/pseuds/pintpotjudas
Summary: In the Soviet Union, men do not have male soulmates.(Illya's point of view on the events in A Marked Man)





	Skin Deep

In the Soviet Union men do not have male soulmates. It is part of the praxis of the glorious communist regime; same sex alliances are not useful. They aren’t even considered bourgeois excess: they are simply abhorrent. 

Illya hides his tattoo beneath his father’s watch, doesn’t answer questions that other recruits ask him about who his girl is. By the time he is sixteen people stop asking him: they will not get an answer and it is best not to rile someone as unstable as Kuryakin.

He doubts he will ever meet the man with the ludicrous name inked on his skin.  
*

Napoleon Solo is the most beautiful man Illya has ever seen. He had thought as much from the poor quality slides he had been shown and from the vague glimpses he caught of him in the low sodium glare of the street lamps in East Berlin. Up close he is breathtaking.

Sitting across from him in a cafe in West Berlin Solo opens his mouth and says terribly ugly things. He insults Illya’s mother, one thing that Illya cannot stand for. His mother had still loved him even after she had seen the name he bore on his wrist. He throws a table over and walks away.

He does not expect any of this to work.

*  
Two things become clear to Illya during their time in Rome. The first is that Napoleon must know about his soul mark. The second is that he truly must loathe Illya for it.

He taunts him and belittles him and then sleeps with a hotel receptionist.

Truly, he had not expected his soulmate to have a corresponding mark but he had also not expected to be despised for his own, particularly by a Westerner. And yet Solo smiles when he forces Illya to be mugged.

He buys a new watch and tries to forget what he is covering up.

*  
Napoleon is bleeding. It is all that Illya can focus on as his fingers undo buckles and straps. He eventually lifts Napoleon out of the chair where he has been tortured and then turns to deal with his torturer. The man burns.

Illya has no regrets about the nature of any the deaths visited on the fascists and their sympathisers. He smiles at Napoleon before he is even aware of what he is doing.

Solo does not smile back.

*  
He has to kill the American and get the tape for Mother Russia.

He does neither and is given his father’s watch back in return.

He cannot tell if he is relieved to be seconded to UNCLE. He swallows his whisky and does not look at Napoleon Solo.

*  
In Istanbul Gaby’s happiness is nearly infectious.Tomas is good looking and soft spoken, well read and very kind. 

She makes Illya dance to something egregious called The Beatles and then falls asleep on him like a child at a birthday party who has become worn out by the celebration.

Napoleon watches them. He looks less polished than usual, with his tie off and his hair tousled. Normally, in his American made, finely tailored suits he looks completely untouchable. Fired by the alcohol Gaby insisted he drink, and the desire to touch Napoleon’s soft hair, he asks the man about his own soulmate.

Napoleon gives him a strange look and then discloses that she is dead.

Illya can think of nothing worse. 

Napoleon shrugs and drains his drink.

“She didn’t love me.” He says.

Napoleon goes to bed and Gaby murmurs in her sleep and Illya stays awake for hours thinking how unfair it all is.

*

Sometimes Illya feels Napoleon watching him. Perhaps he is curious about this strange Russian who bears his name on his skin.

He wonders what Napoleon thinks. Probably that he is just as violent as his file and initial behaviour made him out to be, and that no amount of chess can make him less of a KGB thug.

In Pezanas a little cat weaves around his ankles and he bends to stroke her. He glances up to find Napoleon watching them, amused. Perhaps he had thought Illya more likely to snap her neck than to scratch her ears.  
*  
In London Napoleon meets up with his former CIA handler. After the meet he is skittish and irritable, nearly snapping at Gaby. He apologises immediately and then disappears for hours. 

He returns drunk and unhappy, his hair wet from the rain, and Illya longs to take him into his arms.

 

*

Napoleon does not see the point in being faithful to a soulmate who does not love you. Illya thinks of sleeping with someone who is not Napoleon and his hands begin to shake.

*

In Portugal Illya spends a rare day off on a beach with Gaby and Tomas. He sits and reads a terrible spy novel, occasionally making Gaby laugh with the more fanciful passages. 

They return to the hotel to find that Napoleon has somehow procured the use of someone’s kitchen and has made them a meal to celebrate Gaby and Tomas’s engagement. She claps her hands delightedly and Tomas looks incredibly pleased as he pours the crisp sparkling wine.

Once again, Illya feels Napoleon’s eyes on him, and for a brief, mad moment, he imagines cornering him after Tomas and Gaby have gone to bed, and suggesting they spend the night together.

He isn’t stupid, he knows what Napoleon’s cologne smells like. He had clearly spent the night with another man in Nice. Perhaps Napoleon will pity him enough to allow a night of pretending to be loved.

Napoleon rebuffs all of Illya’s smiles with frowns of his own and at one point even crosses his arms defensively over his chest. 

Illya goes to bed alone and spends the night chastising himself. At least he hadn’t verbally propositioned the man. Better to not have Napoleon’s disgust confirmed.

*  
In Budapest Napoleon punches Illya in the face as he tries to help him when he is wounded. In terms of actual physical violence it barely registers on the scale of injuries he has suffered. But it is further proof that Napoleon cannot stand the idea of his touch even for the most innocent of reasons. He feels it may scar him for life.

Napoleon is the one to apologise profusely after the incident. Illya accepts the apologies. He was the one touching without permission, after all.

Napoleon smiles at him more after that, clearly relieved that Illya no longer presses his arm. Illya overrules every one of his instincts, even balls his hands into fists when he wants to put them on Napoleon.

Instead he destroys a safe house on a solo mission and kills two enemy agents with his bare hands. Waverley doesn’t comment, except to say that he’ll keep it from the rest of Illya’s team and he really should put ointment on his split knuckle.

*

It is hot in New York and Illya wants to ask Napoleon for a restaurant recommendation with air conditioning.

He doesn’t knock as he enters their suite and finds Napoleon bare chested with his name etched into his skin. The letters are so deep and so dark that they look embossed, almost three dimensional on the pale skin of his chest.

Napoleon is frozen, terrified. Illya is transfixed and horribly confused.

“That is- that is my name.” He says, foolishly.

It seems to snap Napoleon out of his state.

“It’s not a big deal.” He says, buttoning the shirt as if it might erase Illya’s memory.

Illya’s heart is beating wildly, he feels as if he has been stabbed.

“Why- why didn’t you-?”

“It isn’t as if you can love me back, is it? I’ve read your file.”

Oh.

He is unworthy. This is more familiar ground, being denied something, because ultimately, he does not deserve it.

“My anger-”

“Yes, that’s it.” Napoleon replies, bitterness in his voice. It does not sound as if that is it at all, but before Illya can ask what he has done, Napoleon has left him alone.

*  
For the first time in his career, Illya reads the files the KGB and the CIA keep on him. He does not know if it makes him a poor spy or a good Soviet citizen that he expected his nation to write the truth about him.

It says that he has no soulmate. There is even some rather absurd speculation that this has helped mold him into a creature of violence.

He had always thought that the KGB had known. How could they not? They knew everything else. He has suffered many insults that he imagined were related to his essentially anti-Communist tattoo. But no one knew. He has managed to keep the secret so perfectly... too perfectly.

He thinks, as he tracks Napoleon, that many events are now cast in a much different light. Their first meeting, Napoleon’s cruelty, are now the words of a man who believed he was presented a soulmate who would never return the sentiment.

The pretend soulmate. Illya had never asked her name for fear that he would not be able to stop himself from looking her up, finding a photograph, anything, that proved she was the opposite of himself. Even though he had invented a soulmate, Napoleon had still given himself the same reality. Illya’s heart aches for him.

Their positions, although similar, were not the same. Illya had never expected reciprocation. Napoleon had desperately wanted it.

He finds the man on a bench by the river. When he shows him the neat, uniform on letters of the tattoo under his watch strap Napoleon clings to him like a man accepting an arm onto a life raft.

*  
Napoleon keeps waking him up by running anxious fingers over his wrist.

“You’ll rub it away.” Illya remarks, tired, but extremely happy.

“I won’t.” Napoleon says, oddly sincere. He kisses his name.

“I’m very sorry.” Napoleon says, for perhaps the hundredth time that morning.

“As am I.” Illya repeats, for it bears repeating.

“I behaved worse. I lied and I hit you.”

Illya pulls Napoleon onto his chest. “And if I had disturbed you in shower in Rome all of this would have been over very quickly.”

Napoleon glares up at him from where his face is pressed against Illya’s clavicle, his eye with the darker pigment like an oil spill through the blue.

“You’re supposed to be deadly serious at all times, Peril.” He says.

“Was it in my file?” Illya asks, lightly. 

Napoleon hits him with a pillow.

*

**Author's Note:**

> This is a one shot, I said. Not going to write anything more than this, I said. BREVITY I SAID.


End file.
